MILAN.- Pirelli HangarBicocca’s exhibition program for 2026–2027 will present eight major monographic exhibitions by both Italian and international artists. The program will introduce new perspectives and dialogues through site-specific shows conceived specifically for its distinctive and expansive exhibition spaces. Pirelli HangarBicocca will offer a cultural experience aligned with the institution’s mission to produce, promote, and make contemporary art more accessible to a larger audience.

Across the next two years, the program will draw the public's attention to artistic practices that critically examine the present by exploring forms of collective knowledge. The invited artists’ research converges around shared themes, each approached from distinct perspectives. Benni Bosetto and Aki Sasamoto's investigations focus on the body, the ritual nature of everyday gestures, and communication. The notion of living somewhere as a perceptual experience or field of relations is central to the works of Luciano Fabro and Rirkrit Tiravanija. Carlos Bunga makes memory visible through matter with his sculptures and ephemeral architecture, while Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller weave narratives that are suspended between sound, imagination, and technology. Hicham Berrada introduces unexpected landscapes reinvented through science and natural phenomena. Cecilia Vicuña, on the other hand, transforms unstable, ephemeral gestures into tools of knowledge and resistance through a language by blending poetry, manual skills, and activism.

The 2026–2027 calendar was developed by the curatorial department led by Vicente Todolí, Pirelli HangarBicocca’s Artistic Director since 2012 and former director of the Tate Modern in London, the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves in Porto, and the IVAM in Valencia. The exhibition program is complemented by a range of publishing activities, including the publication of a catalogue for each exhibition and the creation of exhibition guides, which will be distributed to the public free of charge.

With the announcement of its two-year program, Pirelli HangarBicocca reaffirms its long-term vision and commitment to ensure its exhibitions and cultural events free and accessible to the public, including Anselm Kiefer's The Seven Heavenly Palaces 2004-2015. This longstanding approach aligns with the Milanese institution's mission to be a model museum and a vibrant hub for exchange and discussion.

«Pirelli's desire to support Pirelli HangarBicocca stems from the belief that culture, knowledge, and art are essential drivers of social evolution and development. We have accompanied the institution’s growth over the years, helping it become a pillar of the local community and an important player in the international art scene by promoting production, research, and cultural discourse. It is a source of great pride for all of us, as well as for those who work enthusiastically every day to disseminate culture», explains President Marco Tronchetti Provera.

«With the new cycle of eight exhibitions, we want to create a journey that unfolds over time. Each show resonates with the others, becoming a shared experience that encourage a direct relationship between the artworks and the public. The program is born from the dialogue between the artists’ vision and our space. The museum we imagine is a living organism, capable of questioning the present and offering visitors new perspectives», says Vicente Todolí, the museum's Artistic Director.

The program surrounding the exhibitions

From 2026 to 2027, Pirelli HangarBicocca will continue to develop its program of activities and events. The focus will be on communication, research, in-depth analysis, education, inclusion, and training for various audiences. The calendar reflects Pirelli HangarBicocca's commitment to openness and dialogue with communities and organizations working in various areas of society. The program will consist of the following:

• The Public Program, which is organized as an in-depth exploration of the exhibitions and involves interdisciplinary events with Italian and international guests. These events will also include performances and music.

• Educational activities for schools, children, and families.

• Accessibility and inclusion projects developed in collaboration with Milan and Italy-based institutions and organizations.

• Training projects designed for teachers and professionals. These projects involve Italian artists directly and are designed to build knowledge and skills by connecting art, contemporary topics, languages, school, and work.

• Public activities will include guided tours of the exhibitions led by museum mediators and based on consistent dialogue with visitors.

The 2026–2027 exhibition calendar at Pirelli HangarBicocca

Forthcoming exhibitions will alternate between the Navate and the Shed exhibition spaces. The former will feature major retrospectives or anthologies of well-known, historicized artists, and the latter will showcase younger or mid-career artists.

2026

Shed space

Benni Bosetto
12.02-19.07.2026
Curated by Fiammetta Griccioli

For her first major institutional solo exhibition, Benni Bosetto (b. 1987, Merate, Italy; lives and works in Milan) will transform the Shed into a domestic environment, a living organism, where rooms, walls, and surfaces come to life, giving to the space a distinctly human dimension. The show will invite profound reflections on the body, on intimacy exposed to the gaze of others, and on the concept of care and rest as forms of resistance. Her practice moves across drawing, sculpture, installation, and performance, exploring representations of identity and grasping the human experience, while also reflecting on notions of memory and ritual, sensuality and sexuality.

Navate space

Rirkrit Tiravanija
26.03 – 26.07.2026
Curated by Lucia Aspesi and Vicente Todolí

Among the most influential contemporary artists of the international scene, Rirkrit Tiravanija (b. 1961, Buenos Aires; lives and works between New York, Berlin and Chiang Mai) has profoundly shifted how we perceive and engage with art today. Since the 1990s, his socially engaged practice has explored questions of cultural identity and often encouraged visitor participation, introducing everyday life into the museum. The retrospective at Pirelli HangarBicocca will center on Tiravanija’s long-standing investigation into architectural practice. Alongside a selection of historical works, the exhibition will create spaces for gathering and sharing real-life experiences, with works drawing inspiration from visionary figures such as Rudolf Michael Schindler, Frederick Kiesler, Le Corbusier, Philip Johnson, Jean Prouvé and Sigur Lewerentz.

Shed space

Aki Sasamoto
17.09.2026 – 17.01.2027
Curated by Roberta Tenconi with Tatiana Palenzona

At the intersection of performance, sculpture, installation, and video, Aki Sasamoto (b. 1980, Kanagawa, Japan; lives and works in New York) creates environments and situations in which objects and people engage in unusual interactions. Through a metaphorical lens, her immersive experiences explore time and memory with a blend of playfulness and philosophical insight. The exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca marks the artist’s first major institutional presentation in Europe and, through works spanning nearly two decades of artistic exploration, delves into the notion of connectedness and the intricate structures of human relationships— how we understand each other, navigate social life, and negotiate the elasticity of bonds.

Navate space

Luciano Fabro
08.10.2026 – 21.02.2027
Curated by Fiammetta Griccioli, Roberta Tenconi and Vicente Todolí with the collaboration of Silvia Fabro (Archivio Luciano e Carla Fabro)

Luciano Fabro (b. 1936, Turin – d. 2007, Milan) was a prominent exponent of the Arte Povera movement and a central figure in postwar Italian art. The artist initiated in the 1960s a personal exploration into sculpture and the concept of inhabiting space—conceived as a dynamic field of action. After more than 45 years since his last exhibition in Milan, the retrospective at Pirelli HangarBicocca, organized in collaboration with the Archivio Luciano e Carla Fabro, delves into his perceptual and spatial investigations tracing the evolution through seminal works and culminating in complex architectural structures and ideal environments—often made in paper—that the artist referred to as “Habitat”.

2027

Shed space

Carlos Bunga
02 – 07.2027
Curated by Lucia Aspesi and Sandra Guimarães

For his first solo exhibition in Italy, Carlos Bunga (b. 1976, Porto, Portugal; lives and works in Barcelona) will radically transform the architectural setting of the Shed at Pirelli HangarBicocca, redefining its spatial boundaries and transfiguring its volumes. Through his peculiar use of color, transient materials, sculpture, and performance, the multidisciplinary artist investigates the underlying hierarchical and authoritarian dynamics embedded in the spaces and environments we inhabit. His ongoing processes of construction and demolition bring forth layered and urgent issues such as migration, demography, and socio-economic disparity.

Navate space

Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller
03 – 07.2027
Curated by Fiammetta Griccioli and Vicente Todolí

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller (b. 1957, Ontario, Canada; b. 1960, Vegreville, Canada; both live and work in British Columbia) have been working together since 1995 in one of the most compelling artistic collaboration in contemporary art. Their practice challenges sensory experience, creating immersive, ambiguous and emotionally charged settings where sound guides vision, and observation yields to auditory experience. Cardiff and Bures Miller’s installations lead the viewer into a distorted and fantastical reality where perceptions of time and space blur. For their first major retrospective in an Italian institution in over two decades, the Navate of Pirelli HangarBicocca will be inhabited by monumental installations, and sonic works alongside more intimate pieces, including historical works and new pieces specifically conceived for the exhibition space.

Shed space

Hicham Berrada
09.2027 – 01.2028
Curated by Vicente Todolí with Tatiana Palenzona

For his largest exhibition to date—and for the first time in an Italian institution—Hicham Berrada (b. 1986, Casablanca, Morocco; lives and works in Paris) will bring to Pirelli HangarBicocca a selection of his most emblematic and multisensory landscapes that blur the boundaries between art and science. Drawing from the history of cinema, the aesthetics of video games, as well as studies in botany and mineralogy, the artist creates sculptures and installations that merge the laws of physics with evocative scenographies, and mathematical formulas with dreamlike settings. Situated somewhere between a scientific laboratory, a Wunderkammer, and cinematic set, the Shed will be transformed into a hybrid environment where photographic prints and video projections interact with uncanny vitrines staging the unpredictable spectacle of nature in motion.

Navate space

Cecilia Vicuña
10.2027 – 02.2028
Curated by Lucia Aspesi and Roberta Tenconi

Cecilia Vicuña (b. 1948, Santiago, Chile; lives and works in New York) is an artist, poet, and activist that has developed multidisciplinary practice—spanning sculpture, installation, poetry, painting, video, performance, and sound—which stands among the most radical voices in contemporary art. Her work is deeply rooted in political and social engagement, drawing on Indigenous knowledge systems and ancestral cosmologies to question the violence of memory. The retrospective at Pirelli HangarBicocca will feature a wide selection of the artist’s works, offering a layered and sensitive exploration—merging perception and memory, spirituality and activism—and addressing issues tied to sociopolitical, cultural, and ecological urgencies. The Navate space will be transformed into a living archive of fragments and precarious gestures, traces of memory and rituals, where natural materials such as wool, shells, feathers, and found wood become carriers of ancestral wisdom.